COUNTRY LIFE IT is a curious fact that a good
part of the public prefers the worse before the better. This is particularly apparent in the taste for apples. I should doubt whether any apple is more popular in the market (always excepting Cox's Orange) than Beauty of Bath. It is early, red and not sour, and these partial virtues seem quite to obsture the fact that it has no particular flavour. In nearly all varieties redness is the supreme market .quality, as is brownness in hens' eggs or whiteness, in bread or clearness in cider. What are the best apples in succession? Among very earlies, Irish Peach has never won its proper place. Langley Pippin is the most delicious among its immediate successors. Next, James Grieve has unquestioned supremacy. It is an apple one must have. A very little later comes St. Everard, the nearest to Cox in flavour of all in descendants. A quantity of good apples succeed, of which the lusty triploid Blenheim Orange (if given diploid neighbours) is the best, after the -Ribston Pippin, the father or mother of Cox. Among very late keepers, D'Arcy Spice (of incomparable flavour) and Sturmer Pippin are almost necessary. This small list of personal favourites concerns only what we quaintly term eating apples, a phrase rather short both of meaning and grammar.
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